🧄 Toum (Garlic Sauce)
Toum is a fluffy, snow-white Lebanese garlic sauce made by slowly emulsifying raw garlic with neutral oil, lemon juice and salt. It is intensely pungent and creamy, with no egg at all. Toum is served with grilled and rotisserie chicken, shawarma and grilled meats across the Levant and the Gulf.
Diets
Allergens
None of the 14 major allergens in a typical recipe.
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 head garlic (about 60 g peeled)
- 1 tsp salt
- 500 ml neutral oil
- 60 ml lemon juice
- 2–3 tbsp ice water
Method
- Halve the cloves and remove any green germ.
- Blend the garlic with salt to a paste.
- With the motor running, add the oil in a very thin stream, alternating with lemon juice and a little ice water, until thick and white.
- Refrigerate in a closed jar; it keeps about a month.
How to make it lighter
- Toum is mostly oil: 1 tbsp (about 15 g) is roughly 100 kcal, so measure it.
- Thin a spoonful with lemon juice and water to make a lighter drizzle.
- Use it as a strong flavour accent alongside chicken rather than as a dip.
History
Toum is a long-standing part of Lebanese and wider Levantine cooking, especially alongside charcoal-grilled chicken. Today it is a standard condiment in shawarma and grill restaurants throughout the Middle East.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →